actually its
supporters; only they see that such a constitution, though the best,
cannot be realized under all circumstances, and that, while men are what
they are, we must be satisfied with less freedom, the monarchical
constitution, under the given circumstances and the present moral
condition of the people, being even regarded as the most advantageous.
In this view also the necessity of a particular constitution is made to
depend on the condition of the people as though the latter were
non-essential and accidental. This representation is founded on the
distinction which the reflective understanding makes between an idea and
the corresponding reality. This reflection holding to an abstract and
consequently untrue idea, not grasping it in its completeness, or--which
is virtually, though not in point of form, the same--not taking a
concrete view of a people and a State. We shall have to show, further,
on, that the constitution adopted by a people makes one substance, one
spirit, with its religion, its art, and its philosophy, or, at least,
with its conceptions, thoughts and culture generally--not to expatiate
upon the additional influences _ab extra_, of climate, of neighbors, of
its place in the world. A State is an individual totality, of which you
cannot select any particular side, although a supremely important one,
such as its political constitution, and deliberate and decide respecting
it in that isolated form. Not only is that constitution most intimately
connected with and dependent on those other spiritual forces, but the
form of the entire moral and intellectual individuality, comprising all
the forces it embodies, is only a step in the development of the grand
whole, with its place pre-appointed in the process--a fact which gives
the highest sanction to the constitution in question and establishes its
absolute necessity. The origin of a State involves imperious lordship on
the one hand, instinctive submission on the other. But even
obedience--lordly power, and the fear inspired by a ruler--in itself
implies some degree of voluntary connection. Even in barbarous states
this is the case; it is not the isolated will of individuals that
prevails; individual pretensions are relinquished, and the general will
is the essential bond of political union. This unity of the general and
the particular is the Idea itself, manifesting itself as a State, and
which subsequently undergoes further development within itself. The